I'll admit I didn't read all of the last couple of posts, but I'll throw this one out there. This is an example from a case I had about 11 years ago, and it's not hypothetical.

Subject is 18 year and a couple months old. Victim is 15 years and 11 months old. This was in CA, and the legal age of consent is 18 with some caveats concerning age spreads more than 3 years apart for minors... Subject is a friend of the victim's family, and no relationship other than friendship between subject and victim at the time of the incident. Mom is a single parent, and there are additional younger siblings. Subject is watching the kids while Mom is doing errands. Comes home and victim is giving subject a BJ in the back room. I forget how the local cops got involved. Mom tells the cops that it was probably victim that started the incident as she is sexually active and had it in for subject for months. Subject tells the cops that victim was hyper aggressive during the whole incident. Victim admits to being hyper aggressive, initiating the incident to include aggressively pulling the guys junk out and...

He was found guilty of carnal knowledge, violation of CA penal code, is a registered sex offender for life, and his military career needless to say ended quite abruptly. I watched the spirit of the law die a slow and horrorific death during this case. It still bothers me to this day. It's one of four cases that I just can't let go of. Too many people let the wrong thing happen as a matter of course. It's been hard for me to take the sexual offender list as anything but tainted ever since. It's a modern day scarlet letter, and however many legitimately end up branded, it only takes one to start questioning the validity of a lifetime sentence like that.

A lot of criminal cases are clear cut. Subject did it, and will do it again given the chance. Not all of them though. When the legal system becomes a pipe-line instead of each individual case handled as an independent entity, the integrity of the entire system is in question. In this case, it's the sexual offender list itself. It begs the question, what if you were the one miscarrage of justice on that list?